Wednesday, March 2, 2011

From the Golf Course, March 2011

It has been a little while since you have heard from us in the golf course maintenance department. With all of the snow gone right now we are able to be out on the grounds and check out the turf conditions. The golf course turf is in great condition coming out of the winter. Winter turf diseases and desiccation are non existent and as the soil temperatures warm the turf will get much greener.

Clean up and tree pruning is always an on going process for us with over 5,000 trees on the property. We still have a lot of damaged trees to address over the next couple of weeks but we are making progress. We have taken out some trees that were damaged from last year’s July 18th storm and some that showed some very weak points that were not safe.

Good news is as soon as the soil temperatures stay consistently above the freezing mark we will be ready to open. However the 10 day forecast does not have any daytime temperatures above 41° and almost all of the over night lows are down below freezing. We are constantly monitoring the soil temperatures and we still have a lot of frost in the ground. The top couple of inches is constantly changing with the daily changes, however down at 6” deep we are still frozen on almost all areas. Having traffic on “thawed” ground over the top of frozen ground can create some very bad turf systems later in the year. I have included a soil temperature chart for you to see the “thawed” and “frozen” turf. The green line represents the probe that is 6” deep. Notice the temperature is right at freezing and does not fluctuate with the daily temperature changes. However the orange colored line does change every day and that represents the top couple of inches that are being affected by the daily temperature changes. You can even see the 60° day that we had back in February.

We will keep very close eyes on everything and try to open as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience.

Greens and Grounds Department

Welcome to the Golf Course Maintenance Blog Page for Des Moines Golf and Country Club. It is our goal to provide you with useful information that is happening at DMGCC. Please check back often or follow us on Twitter at @dmgccsupt. Thank you.

About Me

Certified Golf Course Superintendent and Master Greenkeeper at Des Moines Golf and Country Club. We hope you enjoy our blog as we continue to try to inform you about some of the items that we do in our golf course maintenance department.